I looked closely at the girl’s arm as her markings began to appear, the ink now more vivid than before. The male frantically altered the system as her markings flickered to life beneath her skin.
I narrowed my eyes, taking in the symbol for a water affinity that showed up across her arm.
Elemental. And by the looks of it, there was only one mark.
I breathed a sigh of relief as the malefinallyslipped from the room.
Axel sprang into action as he hurried over, tapping into the system with urgency as he began to scan the results.
“We should have done something. We should have stopped him.”
I ground my teeth as I stared at my second. “And what would we have done, Axel?” I bit back, even as regret flickered through me. “He wasn’t supposed to be here either. At least now we can see what is being altered.
Axel didn’t reply, his lips drawing tight as he looked through the coding to see what had been altered while the male had been here.
“Nothing seems out of the ordinary. I’m not quite sure what he actually changed while he was here.”
“What do you mean?” I huffed out as I paced around the room, looking for anything unusual.
“I mean,” he bit back, tension rising in the small space. “Nothing seems out of the ordinary in her report.”
“Something has to have been changed,” I answered in annoyance. “Otherwise, why was he going through the Astra Tech System in the first place?”
“I don’t know, Cal. And if I did know, we wouldn’t still be here. I really can’t tell what would have been changed. Everything looks the same. On this end, the coding is impeccable. If something was altered or misplaced, there’s not a single trace of it left behind.”
I stepped over and then studied the screen beside him. A glance to my side told me the female in the chair was still unconscious. We had maybe five minutes before the priestess reentered the room, expecting to find only a newly-marked angel in the space.
It wasn’t much time, but just enough time to review the files we needed to assess. With hurried movements, I began to scan through the female’s file, looking into her relatives and those with whom she had ties. My eyes stopped, my pulse increasing as I took in a particular female’s photo, recognition flaring in my mind as I stared at sea-glass hazel eyes threaded with starlight and wavy brown locks of hair.
Her.
I stared at the photo of the female from the tavern the other night. My eyes scanned over the name on file,Raelyna Kingsley.
I committed it to memory, her name rolling off my lips perfectly.
I looked further into the files. Yes, they weredefinitelysisters.
“Look into her results as well,” I said to Axel, a slight nod inthe direction of the photo that had caught my eye, before my gaze once again flicked toward the female in the chair.
I leaned closer, pressing against the markings on her forearm as I studied the symbols. They were identical to the golden symbols on both Axel and my arms. Only, instead of a shimmering gold ink appearing, the ink embedded in her arm was a deep onyx color.
The inkings and our markings could only come from Aeternus. It’s why we still followed the Eternal, even when the other three Quarters chose to follow their own gods after The Rift divided Aurelia.
Everyone in Aurum Quarter knew The Rift appeared shortly after the first angels stopped following Aeternus. The corruption that spread across our world caused irreparable havoc in the form of the divide separating our Quarters.
A permanent reminder of the consequence of turning from the Eternal God who’d created our world.
“We’ve got to be missing something,” Axel bit out from beside me as he tapped furiously across the screens, “these reports and filings for every single one of the unmarked angels as they come in all havethe same coding.”
I frowned, rubbing my jaw as I looked toward him. “What do you mean by the same coding?”
“Well . . .” He paused dramatically, and I nearly snapped before he continued. “Each individual’s file should have a slightly different coding system. It should just be slightly altered—individualized just for them. However, if you look here, here, and here.” He pointed to a few different files as he pulled them up on the screen. “Each of these has a telltale trait. It’s the same coding frequency that is utilized on her file,” he stated confidently.
“Meaning?” I prompted as I stared at Axel before narrowing my sights back in on the profiles he pulled up.
“Meaning that the male who came in here and messed withher file has messed with not just her reports, he’s tampered with multiple other unmarked reports.”
“Stars-damned,” I muttered, regretting allowing the male to leave the room as I stalked across the room.
